


And all our Friends want us to fall in Love.

by DepressedRat



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst?, Complicated Relationships, Confessions, Introspection, Love Letters, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Other, Tags to be added, ambiguously requited love, aroace dream, crushes and all that messy shit, exploring themes of friendship and love, idiots in limbo of requited unrequited love, just projecting at this point, meetups and the aftermath, might continue but not sure, pspspspsps aroace folks come get yall's food, the complicated dilemma of finding out someone has a crush on you, written in the cadence of spoken word, yeah we love cliches here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28524492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DepressedRat/pseuds/DepressedRat
Summary: Dream smiles, and for a fleeting moment it's like nothing has changed at all.They gather the rest of their things from the sandy trenches of the grey beach, ancient cigarette butts cast about so thick they seem to outnumber the shells as they walk back up its length. The boardwalk is as rickety and worn as Dream's sense of continued understanding, his eyes caught on the back of George's head, wondering how long he'll have to sit and tick off boxes like a to do list.How many hours he'll have to scribble out a map ofthisandthat, of moments in time that echoed in his ears for years and a bubbled thought circled exactly five and a half times that reads;How the fuck does he have a crush on me?---OR the one where george has a crush on dream, but dream doesn't know how to make himself feel the same way
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound, Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	And all our Friends want us to fall in Love.

**Author's Note:**

> " _It should come as no surprise that some hearts are like dark bedrooms - tombs that we allowed ourselves to shut because we thought that way, everything would be all right._ "
> 
> turn on the lights by shane koyczan
> 
> _--------------_
> 
> insert the usual author's note here about it not reflecting real people and all that good stuff, i don't know their personalities and it shows 
> 
> also fuck it, this reads more like poetry than prose but it exists now
> 
> had no idea how to tag this cause & vs / is a whole thing  
> don't want to be misleading and i am not sure what exactly / entails; i don't think that unrequited type stuff counts but hey, fuck it who knows 
> 
> if y'all have an opinion on it let me know :) 
> 
> ** note: i use a mixture of persona vs real names here cause the way i comprehend online names is that they're interchangeable and all equally valid and real ways to address people, hell most people don't actively think of themselves by certain name anyways, and for online friends you use their screen names like second nature**

Everytime he stands in the waves, it's like resting squarely on the very breaths of the Earth. 

He remembers being a kid, toes dug into the depths of the warm sand beneath brown waters, slimy and gritty, a tiny little dot caught in the pale blue gravity of something he didn't even know was bigger than his understanding of the sky. 

Ups and downs played like a symphony, an echo of a mirror looking at itself. Up and down, and it cemented in his ear drums until even when he climbed from the waves, swim trunks and shirt clinging to his skin like a sopping wet cocoon, he still felt the rise and fall of them in the heel to toe trek up the gentle incline.

A generous offering that made him dizzy, made him look over his shoulder as he held his mom's hand and stumbled in the shifting shape of the sand to keep up, and wondered if some part of him could stay. 

That he'd always been looking for it since then, like a noise he could never find and when the soft breath of the waves against the shore hit his ears, there was a chance that he'd finally found it. 

Today, he stands up to his chest in the oceans cupped palms, deeper than he's comfortable going. 

Water lapping around his neck when the ocean raises it's hand and shoves him, he stares at the birds swooping lazily overhead and a breath flees him like a sigh. Limbs limp and floating in the sway of it. Swim trunks scraping his thighs like leaves of kelp that could never grow in these hot, shallow waters.

Water laps at his chin and the salt rests heavy on his tongue and crowds his nose, drifting silently. He waits his turn for some reminder to speak, some reminder to wake up and return to shore, like an insomniac slumbers with their eyes half closed, mind half gone. 

_"Dream?"_

The water laps at his lips and the waves push him angry and steady, further out despite his best effort to anchor himself in the sand, hair caught in the needy tug until the strands haunt the sides of his neck. He stares at the shore, feels the crash of each wave like a hollow detail.

People mill about the length of the beach and he stares with stinging eyes, cast red by the salt spray, begging to be blinked. The fact is he's a different kind of gone altogether, unfocused and numb. He knows that shape in his vision is the colorful shadow of his friend, but sunk so deep into nostalgia he sees only through him.

"Dream-" 

The water laps at his nose, and he holds his breath, part of him believing if he held it long enough he could make the need for oxygen untrue.

"Clay!"

Dream blinks, toes hitting the sand as he moves closer to shore, ignoring warnings for a stingray shuffle that echo in the back of his head. The hunger pangs of nostalgia dissipate, lips tilting into a smile. 

"Sorry, guess I sort of…" Dream waves a hand next to his head, explanation enough. 

"Zoned the hell out?" Sapnap finishes, up to his stomach in the waves, hair wet and matted to his head. "Dude, you damn near went out to sea."

They stand shoulder to shoulder now, resting back on bent knees, sitting low in the waves so they can share a weightless seat of salt water. A comfortable, companionable silence between them that comes easier than talking. 

Sapnap looks over, a cache of questions at the ready. They snap shut on lips that part and then close, eyes following a waterlogged gaze. 

Dream knows that he sees George at the end of it. 

The latter lurking on the stretch of a towel where the erosion of the beach slopes down to the hard packed sand waiting for the tide, hand shielding his eyes as he stares down at his phone.

Sunburnt and tired, George looks up, sits forward a bit and his eyes scan for someone who's no longer in front of him. They drift to the left along the horizon line and it's as if suppressed joy is brought to the surface. Words said but too far away to hear, a smile taking residence, cracking open into exasperated laughter.

Or so Dream guesses, the sound of it always stuck in his head. 

George waves and it comes as no surprise when he waves back. Sapnap joins in.

"You uh…" Sapnap starts, nodding towards the shore. 

Dream looks down at the water. 

A shove has him stumbling, chin slapping the water a mouthful of it inhaled as he catches himself in the slippery sand. 

Dream shoves him back, coughing notes of laughter pressed from a salty tongue. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I could ask you the same thing, dumbass." 

"Wow, alright… where's all this hostility coming from?" 

Sapnap scoffs. "Oh, so we're gonna pretend like you haven't been acting weird as shit since we got here." 

He hums, fingers swinging through the water just to feel it swirl. "We are. 'Cause nothing's weird." 

"Dude. I called your name at _least_ eight times." 

Dream shakes his head, a denial of reality, because that isn't so unusual these last few days.

It's not like they know him outside of the confines of a monitor, years spent over microphones and thinking often of a plan when they could all see each other. But the truth is, you never really know a person until you're stood right across from them, until you see them almost trip and eat shit, the way they throw their head back when they laugh, the way that sometimes the awkward silences drag out like knives to the chest regardless of how much you used to hide in them. 

The way that your understanding of them changes when they're right in front of you, not just on a screen. Two images so close that at a glance they might as well be the same.

There is an obligation to set them side by side, hope beyond hope that they'll be the same and worry obsessively when they aren't. Mind racing like some stalker type fan that finds excuses for the changes in behavior, an instinct that knows they'll be different but finds validation in the familiar persona to dissect and examine. 

He blames himself even if it doesn't make any sense. 

It feels like a failure, something hard to hear when his fear of not meeting expectations exists in the context of a bigger picture. 

Emblazoned with the terrifying dilemma that he doesn't know George. Not really. 

And is it a crisis? 

Hell, is it even his responsibility? 

"You're doing it again." Sapnap elbows him more gently this time, only enough to knock him to the side with the exhale of the crawling waves. "Listen man, you don't have to- like I'm just puttin' it out there- but you can tell me what's eating at you, I won't judge."

 _"Maybe."_ Sapnap adds with an open smile and fresh honesty. 

"It's just... it's George." 

"Oh…" Sapnap trails off, chin dipping and if they'd been standing on the shore he'd have his hands shoved deep in his pockets by now. 

His mind catches up to his mouth in an uneasy free fall and Dream realizes what he'd said, eyes wide and lips thin, not sure why the hell those words left him in the first place.

" _OH_." 

Cautious brows pinch and Dream turns his head, met with the small o-shape stuck on Sapnap's lips before the younger man's features dissolve into some suitable, sympathetic smirk.

"Uh, well…" A hand claps awkward and light against the back of his shoulder, hesitant in its approach to support and comfort. "Um, I'm glad you felt like you could tell me. That's really- you're valid."

Dream laughs because how the hell can someone be so goddamn awkward and still be armed with such confidence. And it's not like he even explained it at all, but maybe Sapnap felt the same way, boarding up his own windows of refusing to let go.

"Thanks, I mean who else am I going to tell?" Dream points around to the empty catch of the waves, laughter dashed through the syllables. 

"Yeah, yeah-" Sapnap scrubs fingers through the back of his hair, "you're right." 

There's something else not being said. 

The waves slap angry against his skin as if they reflect the frustration of being lied to, because it's different-- it's different to actually see that shuffle of uncertainty, see the words caught behind teeth like barricades. And he just wants them to drop, be picked and plucked out, spat the hell out instead of avoided.

"What?" 

Sapnap looks over, head shaking. "Nothing, it's nothing. We oughta head back before Gogy ends up crispier than McMuffin bacon." 

"No, no--" His voice is neutral, almost amused, words spoken out the side of his mouth, "you obviously have something to add." 

"Yeah, but I shouldn't." Sapnap shrugs, water sloshing as he steps forward, fending off the accusation.

A boiling, brewing sense of irritation crowds his chest, sitting heavy and acidic just below his throat. He doesn't think when he grabs Sapnap's bicep in a tight grip.

"C'mon, just tell me. It can't- it _cannot_ be that bad." 

Sapnap's eyes meet his own and slide away. "Yeah..." 

"Nick." 

The name is like the crack in a levy, the words spilling out and every single one slams into Dream with the combined force of a tree forced to stand there, bark stripped with each pull, leaves yanked, titanic in its implications and he almost thinks he could slam his hands over the other's mouth and make them stop. Maybe scoop them up from the waves, eyes shut in a quest to pretend he never heard them so he could shovel them right back into the vocal cords where they were birthed, as if that made any sense. 

He doesn't understand why they are so dreadful, heavy handed blows that bruise his organs like they're running down a checklist.

"--it was after a game of Among Us, he just messaged me literally out of the blue and I thought it was a joke, 'cause we fuck around all the time. I mean, it didn't really shock me I guess. I just didn't know what to think so I rolled with it and--" 

Dream's heart sits heavy in his bowels, spikes of fight or flight pricking at his heels. 

"George said it was nothing, that ya know it was just a crush and yeah... those things tend to burn themselves out pretty fast." 

He wishes for a tsunami, something to swallow him whole and sweep him away.

"Like he wrote you a letter and everything, and he was gonna-- man, he was gonna give it to you in person! He had it so bad; goddamn simp, I told him it'd just make things weird. 'Cause I know you." Sapnap laughs, fingers dug into the meat of Dream's shoulder as he shoves him in some modicum of dude-bro emphasis. "You've always been an awkward idiot about that stuff." 

"But da~mn." Sapnap winks, slinging an arm over his shoulders, and the weight of it must be heavier than the load on Atlas's because it might as well be breaking his fucking spine. "Dreamy's been out here simpin' back, all of that flirtin' a little more than just fanservice, ay?" 

Sapnap fakes a pout, that comical character crawling out between the excited chatter of a tightly held secret finally let out. "Won't lie, I'm a bit wounded you didn't fall for me instead, babe." 

In any other circumstance, he'd laugh, call him an idiot and probably duck his damn head; smile wide. Something bright against the pale blue sky. Instead, he steps out from under Sapnap's arm and ponders the idea of simply running back into the waves, because every step brings them one foot closer to an eyesore of a towel with the definition of misunderstanding on top of it. 

He hesitates, calf deep in the water and confused. 

Sapnap looks back, the split of a smile stretching for a second only to retract on itself faster than the silence after a gunshot.

Dream could easily say nothing, but there's the snapped fingers of a thought that says fucking fix it, and he deliberately ignores that it's the strummed heartstrings of alarm.

"I think-" Dream licks his lips, fingers flexing at his side. "I think there's a… misunderstanding." 

"Whaddya mea-" Sapnap starts, lazy as the waves, before snapping into the startled expression of a car headed up a one way street. "Wait. You mean--"

"Yeah…"

"Oh God, uh fuck- pretend I didn't--" The panicked response is followed by the stomping din of footsteps crashing through water, two hands gripping his shoulders. "I didn't say anything. Clay, look at me, you heard nothing, _okay?_ " 

"It's fine." Dream waves him off, an easy little laugh breathed to try and smooth the crossed line in the sand out of existence. The sheer magnitude of it might as well be a mountain range. 

"He's such an idiot, such a goddamn chicken shit he should've just said something himself instead of telling me." Sapnap buries his face in his hands. "I'm sorry, man I--" 

"It's fine! _It's fine!_ " And he commits himself to the statement even when the world feels like it will ignite against his skin. "Really, I should've been more clear, it's my bad- just a misunderstanding." 

"Okay, okay." Sapnap takes a deep breath, "so we're cool, right?" 

Dream rolls his eyes, half and haphazard, a thing to ease his own mind. "You're such an idiot." 

"Wow, is it bully Snapmap hours already?" 

Sapnap freezes up at the sound of George's voice. A fear so loud and clear it's broadcasted in every line, even in the limited vocabulary of silent drops of water melting into the sand, gathered at the hem of a set of obnoxious flame patterned swim trunks. 

Ridiculous. Like waiting for his turn to speak, Dream's heart speeds up in a hop, skip, jump of a reactor that goes nuclear everytime he sees George. 

A smile playing hopscotch at the corner of his mouth.

He marks down the word crush in his mind and underlines it with, consider this later.

"Simpnap's being a dumbass. He wouldn't shut up about how much he missed you." Dream starts, moving past George. " _Dweam, O' Dweam-_ " he places a mock wrist to his forehead, voice comically high-pitched. " _I miss George so much, please come back to shore so we can go to the hotel and I can kiss him on the lips--_ " 

Sapnap is thrust out of his opossum-like charade. "Shut up, dipshit. You're just jealous of what we have." 

"Yeah, I wouldn't exactly call it jealousy." 

He hates how he expects George to see right through that statement, see right through the bone cage around his brain and pluck out that little parasite that he _knows_ , something already better off kept secret in the grey matter, and he doesn't know why he feels like he desperately needs to hide it. Protect it despite it causing a gutful of pain.

"Rude." George drawls out, hand to his chest. "Just say you hate me, Dream." 

It's teasing, nothing serious in the tone at all but it grabs Dream by the ears and throws him out on his ass, because what is he supposed to say? A conscious, awkward spark of terror that leaves a linger in the silence too long as he takes the opportunity to roughly dry his hair with a towel too sandy to do much besides deposit a million grains of shell and glass on his scalp. 

He shakes his head like a dog, letting the world spin. 

Light-headed he wages war against the doubt of speaking at all and loses brilliantly. Because at this point it's just instinct.

"I _love_ you, George." 

And it's hard to tell if the red on George's cheeks is just a sunburn. 

"Simp!" Sapnap echoes, pulling the trigger on the weird stir of tension, and was it always like that or is just the expected thing after learning your best friend loved you, and not in the way you thought you knew. 

"Say it back." Dream pushes, forcing mock hurt into his voice, and not sure why, but wanting to throw himself over that metaphorical line in the sand. "Geo~rge, Say it back! Tell me you love me."

"Shut up." George does that nervous little laugh, a hand rubbing down the side of his face. "I'm not saying that." 

_"George!"_

He shouts it loud and indignant enough for the family nearby to turn their heads, sunglasses lifted and eyes squinted. 

"You're so obnoxious." George embraces the moment with a sense of normalcy, grabbing his things, a towel tucked under his arm because his sunburns decided it was time to leave. 

Dream smiles, and for a fleeting moment it's like nothing has changed at all.

They gather the rest of their things from the sandy trenches of the grey beach, ancient cigarette butts cast about so thick they seem to outnumber the shells as they walk back up its length. The boardwalk as rickety and worn as his sense of continued understanding, eyes caught on the back of George's head, wondering how long he'll have to sit and tick off boxes like a to do list.

How many hours he'll have to scribble out a map of _this_ and _that_ , of moments in time that echoed in his ears for years and a bubbled thought circled exactly five and a half times that read;

_How the fuck does he have a crush on me?_

\--_--_--_--_--_--_--_--

He tries so hard not to think about it, but it is insistent and nagging.

Dream lays in bed and fistfights the pull of sleep if only to stare up at the ceiling and remember how much of a dickhead he'd been over just one small thing that used to mean nothing. 

He starts to wonder if maybe he got the better end of the deal after all. 'Cause it would be more disappointing to love and not be loved, right?

He traces the pattern of the ceiling like constellations in the dim blinking light of the fire alarm. He's not so sure anymore.

His dilemma is the existence of a finish line he thinks he can never cross, no winner's circle, no smiles, no trophies inscribed with _congratulations, you made it_. 

Because he doesn't know how to compete when he was never given the right tools to find the right answers. Because to him, there had never been any question; it was something precious.

So why is it hard to still behave that way? 

He turns his head to the side, angled just enough so he sees the shadowy lumps of figures in the bed just a few feet away. That stale taste of the air flying fast and harsh into his nostrils as he breathes in enough to let out a sharp sigh. 

Facing them, he curls in his bed like a question mark.

A montage of different scenes played on an anxious repeat, each one peppered with Sapnap like an awkward third wheel to a goddamn misprint that should have never happened. He almost resents ever being told, regrets and wonders if it makes him a bad person to crave so desperately to have never heard the damning words.

Was it wrong? 

He hopes a heart can't actually break, he hopes it can bend; and he finds a measure of comfort in the idea. Because he knows he could never stomach destroying someone that he loved simply because he couldn't, not like that. At least, he doesn't think so.

And was it a personal failure? Could it be rewritten, something sped through until he found the same words for the same confession; even if it wasn't exactly true? 

Standing like a new set of night terrors ready to pounce is the soft glow of his phone, screen up on the bed, blinking on and off with each notification. It is the sudden grotesque reminder of a regiment of fans, a growing list of friends. Something half hurricane and half volcano, a thing that consisted of too many people who were wishing too hard on it.

 _That_ was just too much pressure.

His eyes flicker along the lines of the dark that shift with the dance of light, reading a series of novels only he could understand. 

He walks back through the same scenarios in his head, of three bodies sitting side by side, sharing the same bed, shitty hotel popcorn passed from hand to hand. Laughter and jokes and a stupid action film turned up way too loud.

Until uncertainty clawed at him, concerned with the things he didn't know-- and he fucking used to.

Begged himself to remember like a held breath when George started to nod off, pushed to the brink of sleep by the exhaustion born from lengths of sunburnt skin. He begged himself to remember that the head resting against his shoulder was just that; finding a place to rest. 

Still he fled, the lame excuse of being tired jumping from his lips like a Hail Mary. He refused to speak in exchange for the sheer discomfort of dodged questions and nightly routines, brushing teeth in the mirror, but stuck staring down at the sink. Because he wasn't about to look up and see what it was that needed changing. 

Going so far as to cement himself in the middle of the bed and face the other way, the loud unspoken attitude of _Fuck Off_ designed to keep himself from having to explain a damn thing. He's tired and they take it in a stride, talking low and close well into the night, laughing at someone's stream played on the phone and god knows that he can feel the occasional glance like ants on the back of his neck. 

_Fuck off._ He embraces the silent chant like he can suddenly apply it to every part of his life. 

He shuts his eyes and shouts it in the rattled nerves of his mind when someone moves to turn out the lights and hesitates by the side of his bed.

It's followed by the stupid, hushed arguments of two idiots fighting over the pillows and the sheets of the same bed. The pull out couch far too shitty to sacrifice their spines on. 

He falls asleep thinking about how the worst thing that could happen, happened. And hell, it really shouldn't feel that bad.

That tomorrow in a role reversal he never expected George would fly home, Nick would leave, and he would sit at his desk only to ponder the philosophy of how three people can feel so goddamn alone.

**Author's Note:**

> i have to confess, i just listened to crush by shane koyczan the entire time I was writing this and it shows :')
> 
> i haven't decided if i am going to continue this or not, idk where it'd go really, other than a deeper dive into something fucking messy and sloppy and angsty so if y'all are into that i guess hmu ??? 
> 
> i just wanted to see someone actually write it so here i am, offering this fic on the corner of the street among the rest :)
> 
> if you wanna drop a comment please feel free to do so  
> and maybe i'll try and wax more poetry about it


End file.
